Kafka on the shore

You may recall that I've been revisiting Haruki Murakami’s novels. I recently re-read ""The Wind-up Bird Chronicle." I just finished "Kafka on The Shore."

Read a serious review of Kafka here.

The first time through I thought Kafka was the much better novel. It was funny and all the supernatural stuff made sense. But now I think Wind-up Bird was better precisely because the supernatural stuff didn't all fit together neatly. The level of explication necessary to tie it all together in Kafka resulted in many stretches of ridiculous dialog. Still, it's a great page turner and worth reading.

I was more disappointed in the review I linked to above. It's an example of pretty much everything I hate about modern book reviews. After reading it, I was surprised to find that it was written by John Updike who is very well-regarded in this area. I guess that means one of us is shallow and scoreboard suggests it's not John Updike. Still...